Likos Ricci
WoodmereArtMuseum 9201 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19118
| woodmereartmuseum.org
WoodmereArtMuseum ISBN: 978-1-888008-03-6
Patricia Likos Ricci Guest Curator
September 30, 2017–January 21, 2018
WoodmereArtMuseum
CONTENTS
Woodmere extends sincere appreciation to the William Penn Foundation for support of the exhibition, its programming, and this catalogue.
Foreword 4 William R. Valerio
Dedication 14 A Grand Vision 18 The House 42 The Wyeth Foundation for American Art as well as Harriet and Larry Weiss provided additional support for this catalogue.
The School 78 The Church 100 The City 134 The State 154 The World 212 Community Postscript 236 Rachel McCay
Additional generous donors include Sally Bellet, Bowman Properties, Ltd., Debbie Brodsky, Russell Harris, MD,
Selected Chronology 238
and Susan and Burn Oberwager.
Rachel McCay
Works in the Exhibition 248 Index 270
Woodmere Art Museum receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.
Support provided in part by The Philadelphia Cultural Fund.
FOREWORD The intent of our exhibition, A Grand Vision:
allowing the other three women to pursue and
Violet Oakley and the American Renaissance, is
sustain their careers as illustrators. They became
to frame a new understanding of Violet Oakley’s
famous nationally for their contributions to Collier’s,
accomplishments and give new visibility to the
Ladies’ Home Journal, Everybody’s Magazine,
depth, range, and meaning of her work. In her
Harper’s Magazine, Good Housekeeping, and other
lifetime, Oakley was best known for her murals
anchor publications in the visual world of American
in the Pennsylvania State Capitol. As described
popular journalism.
in these pages, it was news that a woman had received the prestigious governmental commission in Harrisburg. The murals were celebrated and recognized to be spectacular. Nonetheless, they never became part of the canon of American art. It may be because Harrisburg is off the beaten path, or because the over-the-top opulence and decorative intensity of the state capitol offended modernist sensibilities, as did the didactic nature of mural arts. Regardless of the reasons, an important contribution of this exhibition and the scholarship of Dr. Patricia Likos Ricci, our guest curator, is a rich exploration of Oakley’s iconography and her research into the history of art and ideas. Never content to accept the standard models, Oakley tackled big subjects: freedom of religious belief, equality of race and gender, and systems of social organization that would engender world peace.
However, the breadth of Oakley’s career and the other important projects that occupied her are little known. Bringing these to light is another important goal of the exhibition. Oakley would continue to work as an illustrator for choice projects, as the prestige and positive reviews of the Harrisburg commissions elevated her professional stature and broadened the range of her work. She made portraits of friends and neighbors throughout her career, but she also worked for civic institutions, schools, churches, and wealthy patrons, designing emblems, awards, and school programs, as well as monumental stained glass windows, murals, and decorative ensembles. She counted Vassar College, Sarah Lawrence College, and the Italian government as her patrons. So dedicated was she to the idea of international peace that she spent years attending the meetings of the League of Nations and the
In more recent decades, with revisionism in art
United Nations. She made portraits of the delegates
history and attention to women artists who were
from across the globe, many of which appeared in
previously ignored, Oakley has become known for
Philadelphia’s Evening Bulletin. It is thought that she
her work as an illustrator and as a central figure of
was given the mission to use the opportunity of her
the Red Rose Girls. Early in her career, Oakley lived
portrait sittings to advocate for Philadelphia as the
with friends from Howard Pyle’s illustration classes
site for the United Nations.
at Drexel University—Jessie Willcox Smith, Elizabeth Shippen Green, and Henrietta Cozens—in the Red Rose Inn in Villanova. The arrangement was that Cozens maintained the household and gardens,
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FIG. 1. Unity, from the mural series The Creation and Preservation of the Union, Senate Chamber, Pennsylvania State Capitol, 1911–20. Photograph by Darryl Moran
It is often written that Oakley is a Renaissance woman. We agree, but will develop the notion further. Our exhibition explores the many ways that Oakley helped define the ideals of the American A GRAND VISION: VIOLET OAKLEY AND THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE
5
CAT. 1. Dr. Pedro
Leão Veloso (1887–1947), Delegate from Brazil, from the United Nations series, 1946 (Woodmere Art Museum: Gift of Robert McLean, 1980)
CAT. 2 Mme. Neymanu, Delegate from Turkey, from the League of Nations series, 1927–28 (Woodmere Art Museum: Gift of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2015)
FIG. 2. Sketch of a Woman after Raphael’s Transfiguration
(1516–20), date unknown (Woodmere Art Museum: Gift of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2015)
FIG. 3. Study for “Christ the Carpenter” Triptych, Philadelphia Naval Base Chapel, c. 1944 (Woodmere Art Museum: Gift of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2015)
of figures for an altarpiece at the Philadelphia Navy Yard represent her determination to strike a balance between realist observation and an
Renaissance, a cultural movement that brought together the fine and the decorative arts and
idealization that elevates the human form as a
under the oversight of a board of leading citizens
we can be sure that she contributed to the core
means to express divinity.
of the immediate community, which included
accomplishments of Emerson’s legacy, encouraging
reached back to the grandeur, humanism, and
Emerson. When the museum’s first curator, John
the acquisition of art by women and sustaining
As much as our thesis is that Oakley’s grand vision
artistic practice of the Italian Renaissance. As seen
Joseph Capolino, took leave to serve in World
focus on representational and narrative artists even
is large and encompassing, we are also interested
in these pages, artists like Michelangelo, Raphael,
War II, Emerson became the Museum’s interim
after their work was no longer fashionable in the
in her impact on the community of Northwest
Botticelli, Mantegna, and Carpaccio were Oakley’s
head, eventually assuming the leadership role.
heyday of modernist abstraction.
Philadelphia and on the trajectory of Woodmere
frequent inspiration. However, she did not embrace
Emerson ran the Museum for almost forty years,
itself in the mid-twentieth century. Oakley’s life
the past out of nostalgia. Rather, she genuinely
retiring in 1978. It was she who interpreted Smith’s
partner was the artist Edith Emerson, who served
believed that the Renaissance ideal of organic
civic vision and defined Woodmere’s mission to
on Woodmere’s first board of trustees, which was
human beauty could be pressed into contemporary
embrace Philadelphia’s own artists. We imagine
formed in 1940. Although the Museum had opened
service. So, for example, Oakley’s portraits of the
that the conversation about the formulation
its doors to the public in 1910, it was after the
League of Nations and United Nations delegates
of Woodmere’s purpose was discussed at the
death of founder Charles Knox Smith’s immediate
seem to glow with the beauty of their unique
Emerson-Oakley dinner table in their home,
family that it changed from a private museum to
physical features. Or, her many exquisite drawings
Cogslea, on Saint George’s Road. Given the strength
a public institution and charitable organization,
of Oakley’s convictions and her strong personality,
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Emerson had met Oakley as a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and they began living together in Cogslea in 1918. Decades later, in 1958, Woodmere acquired Emerson’s painting The Calling of Elisha (cat. 2), which had previously hung prominently at Cogslea. When I arrived as Woodmere’s director in 2010, it hung in the Museum’s entrance foyer, and was described
A GRAND VISION: VIOLET OAKLEY AND THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE
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Much of what we know about Oakley and Emerson’s
CAT. 3. The Calling of Elisha, 1920, by Edith Emerson (Woodmere Art Museum: Museum purchase, 1958)
relationship as a devoted same-sex couple comes from friends and colleagues like Patricia Likos Ricci, our guest curator, and from neighbors who knew them well. For instance, Woodmere’s longtime friend and supporter, the late Mrs. Patricia S. Walsh, lived in Cogslea (her mother, Mrs. Dorothy Valentine Cassard, bought the house when Oakley and Emerson downsized and moved into Lower Cogslea, the studio building) and was close friends with both. That Walsh’s children have elected to underwrite Woodmere’s retrieval and conservation of the final element in Oakley’s Yarnall House, The High Tower, is a beautiful act of generosity that again demonstrates the artist’s enduring community
as having been there “forever.” It was dirty and covered with grime from years of being on view just opposite the front doors. I’m glad to write that we
FIG. 4. Emerson’s Studio at Cogslea, date unknown. Photograph
courtesy of Virginia Baltzell. Photographer unknown
(Woodmere Art Museum Archives)
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their “silver anniversary” with a party at Cogslea, marking their twenty-five years as a couple.
have finally had the painting cleaned and restored
In describing Oakley and Emerson’s relationship,
to its gemlike beauty for this exhibition. It derives
we have chosen not to use the term lesbian. It
from Emerson’s design for a stained glass window,
would seem anachronistic, a word that acquired
built for the Keneseth Israel Synagogue in Elkins
new meaning as a declarative affirmation of sexual
Park. The scene is a “calling.” The elder prophet
identity that grew out of the gay rights movement
Elijah meets the younger Elisha, who is plowing
of the late 1960s and 1970s, after Oakley and
his family’s fields with oxen. Elijah recognizes that
Emerson’s roughly forty-three years together,
their destinies are to be intertwined as master and
from 1918 until Oakley’s death in 1961.
protégé. In Emerson’s painting, Elijah raises his
FIG. 5. Edith Emerson, date unknown
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legacy. In 1943, Oakley and Emerson celebrated
hand to command the gaze of the younger man at
A photograph that Emerson entrusted to Likos Ricci
right; his red cloak billows, and in the next instant
says it all, but in code. Emerson used the picture
he will use it to wrap the two of them together for
as the basis for a portrait of Oakley (undated, but
eternity. The narrative is a barely veiled allegory
probably from the 1930s), now in Woodmere’s
of the relationship between Emerson and Oakley.
collection. Oakley, then likely in her sixties, sits at
Emerson was student, studio assistant, protégée,
the elegant dining table at Cogslea. The photograph
and devoted caretaker of Oakley herself and of
and the oil painting also include a representation of
her legacy. Often, in staged photographs, Emerson
Emerson, dressed as her alter ego Giovanni, made
serves Oakley, and, when they sometimes held
by Oakley and hanging over their sideboard. An
theatrical costumed banquets, Emerson dressed as
important difference is that in the painting, Oakley
Oakley’s page.
is depicted as a voluptuous young woman, perhaps
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CAT. 5. “Il
Convito,” The Banquet: Edith Emerson in Page Costume, Others (from Right) Daniel Buckley, Mary Nixon, and Alex de Tarnowski, Celebrating Completion of Seven Panels for the Senate Chamber, date unknown (Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts: Gift of the Violet Oakley Memorial Foundation)
FIG. 6. Violet Oakley at Cogslea, date unknown. Photograph courtesy of Patricia Likos Ricci. Photographer unknown
CAT. 4. Portrait of Violet Oakley, date unknown, by Edith Emerson (Woodmere Art Museum: Gift of Jane and Noble Hall, 1998)
even younger than the forty years of age she was
vision engages with community, city, and state and
when she invited Emerson to live with her in 1918.
expands to encompass the nation and the world.
It’s as if, in ensuring that the photograph would be
As a young graduate of Moore College of Art and
preserved, Emerson wanted it to be known that
Design and an aspiring art historian in the 1970s,
in her eyes, Oakley was forever young, forever
Ricci was interested in the history of women artists.
beautiful. In addition, everything in the painting
She introduced herself to Emerson at Woodmere
There is a special connection between
is about doubles: two doors with curtains, two
and asked to interview her about her life with
d’Harnoncourt and Oakley that warrants comment.
candles, two vases of flowers, and two fruit dishes—
Oakley. Emerson invited her to assist with the
Soon after the Oakley exhibition at the Philadelphia
this table and this dining room serve as metaphors
organization of the collection in the Violet Oakley
Museum of Art, d’Harnoncourt was appointed
for a entire home for two women. A subtle detail is
Memorial Foundation, which Emerson founded in
director. I had the privilege of working as a member
the slight tilt of Oakley’s head, an acknowledgment
1962, after Oakley’s death.
of her team many years later, at the end of a
of the love expressed by Emerson across the table in the bright colors and warm tones of this double portrait.
It was while working with Emerson that Ricci was asked to assist Anne d’Harnoncourt and Ann Percy, who were curating an exhibition of Oakley’s work at
We have also learned a great deal from our guest
the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Ricci’s essay in the
curator. Woodmere’s exhibition builds on the thesis
museum’s accompanying Bulletin established the
expressed in Ricci’s scholarship that Oakley’s grand
chronology of Oakley’s career and an understanding
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of her work that grew directly from her interactions
for the very greatest artists whose legacies she
with Emerson. That Woodmere and its audiences
stewarded. D’Harnoncourt’s great accomplishment
are benefitting from Ricci’s continuing research and
was to break down the barrier between the
scholarship is a great privilege.
museum on the hill in Fairmount and the life of the city of Philadelphia, in many ways creating a depth
legendary tenure that concluded with her untimely
of connection between museum and community that remains unsurpassed. There was a spiritual connection, I must think, between Oakley’s work as an artist and d’Harnoncourt’s work as a museum director, one that was built on a faith that art has the power to touch people’s lives in profound ways.
death in 2008. Back then, before the Executive
Woodmere is grateful to the many institutions who
Offices moved into the museum’s new Perelman
generously lent works of art to the exhibition, and
Building, we were in the main building, and some
to the many private individuals who shared their
of Oakley’s sketches for the Yarnall House murals
great treasures, enabling us to tell the many stories
were on view in our reception area. D’Harnoncourt
that constitute Oakley’s grand vision. Stephen L.
held Oakley at a level of esteem that she reserved
Druggan, Head of School, and all our friends at
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are awed by the talents of photographers Rick Echelmeyer and Darryl Moran and videographer Patrick Dolan. The importance of their work can’t be overestimated, because Oakley’s reputation has been held back by the lack of exciting still and moving images. We thank our friends at the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Philip Horn, Executive Director, and Heather Doughty, Deputy Executive Director, for the help and facilitation of our efforts. It is also necessary to mention the late Brian Zahn, Woodmere’s longtime friend, ardent collector, and scholar. This exhibition represents the realization of a dream that he described to me seven years ago. CAT. 6. Composition Study for “Man and Science” (Lunette), for the Charlton Yarnall House, Philadelphia, 1910–11 (Philadelphia Museum of Art: Bequest of Edith Emerson, 1984)
Finally, so deep are Oakley’s and Emerson’s imprint on the life of the Museum, that Woodmere’s trustees, staff, and volunteers have poured their
Springside Chestnut Hill Academy, embraced the
Walsh supported the retrieval and conservation
love into the exhibition like never before. Usually,
opportunity associated with lending their large,
of The High Tower in honor of their mother, Mrs.
exhibitions are shepherded forward by different
magnificent mural to the exhibition. We offer
Patricia S. Walsh, who was Woodmere’s constant
configurations of our curatorial and education staff,
special thanks to the Pennsylvania Academy of
champion and Violet Oakley’s great friend. We were
the Fine Arts for the loan—and gift—of many
able to develop new programs for schoolchildren
important works of art. City Councilman Alan Domb
in association with this exhibition thanks to the
understood our need to leave no stone unturned
support of Sally Bellet. Bowman Properties, Ltd. are
in our quest to retrieve the final part of Oakley’s
the supporters of the community events that allow
Yarnall House murals; as the current owner of the
us to share the exhibition freely. Susan and Burn
building, he generously gave us access and allowed
Oberwager underwrote our scholarly programs
us to excavate and remove The High Tower from
and Debbie Brodsky gave generously to the
beneath the layers of paint on his walls. We extend
exhibition in general.
special thanks to Russell Harris, MD, for the gift of Oakley’s study for Redemption (cat. 73), in memory of John Casavecchia, who collected Oakley’s work with passion.
The William Penn Foundation has been a meaningful supporter of this exhibition along with two others—Schofield: International Impressionist in 2014 and We Speak: Black Artists in Philadelphia,
Many of Woodmere’s best friends and longtime
1920s–1970s in 2015—significant, ambitious
supporters stepped forward so we could make
endeavors that have propelled the Museum forward
the most of our plans for Grand Vision. As
in numerous ways.
mentioned above, Valentine Walsh and Richard 12
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FIG. 7. (Sundial and Roses in Garden outside Cogslea), date
unknown (Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts: Gift of the Violet Oakley Memorial Foundation)
but this one is a triumph shared by all. Therefore, I must extend my gratitude to Larry Brooks, Ryan Caulfield, Felicia Caviezel, Brian Chepulis, Erin DeCesare, Michael DeGennaro, Megan Gallagher, David Gramm, Natalie Greene, Stephen Kerzner,
For this catalogue, Woodmere has received generous support from Harriet and Larry Weiss and from the Wyeth Foundation for American Art, whose board of trustees takes special interest in projects that disseminate new scholarship in American art.
Sally Larson, Pamela Loos, Rachel McCay, Rick Ortwein, Diane Pastella, Joseph Pompilii, Anne Standish, Hildy Tow, Christina Warhola, Sabina Wister, Anne Wood, Bernadine Young, and Nick Yzzi. Thank you all.
The Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee, the Fleisher Art Memorial, the First Presbyterian
WILLIAM R. VALERIO, PHD
Church in Germantown and the Apostolic
The Patricia Van Burgh Allison Director and
Nunciature in Washington, DC, gave us access
Chief Executive Officer
to Oakley’s art, murals, and stained glass for the photography in this catalogue. As always, we
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